Power and Its Imposters
“And many spread their garments on the road, and others spread leafy branches which they cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed cried out, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!... Hosanna in the highest!’”
“...we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ (is) the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
April 4, 1982
Some of you know the high school setting and the "sweat hogs" characters on the television show "Welcome Back, Kotter". I actually went to a school something-like-that with characters like that: some slicked back hair, leather jacket, and pointed toe boot types. We really had some tough guys called "Crazy Cocoa", "Augie Doggie", and "Booger". You did not give these guys any lip. And you feared being caught in the restroom alone with them lest they take your lunch money.
What I am getting at is the misery I went through during my seventh grade year of junior high. There was this bully named David who got the bluff in on me. All year long, I dreaded going to school and having to run into David. He would grit his teeth and growl that he was going to beat me up if I didn't do so and so, and my stomach would do nauseating somersaults. I prayed for colds, flu, and any other less than terminal affliction which would let me stay home from school. Things did not get better until one day on the playground at the beginning of the eighth grade school year. A bunch of us guys were standing around when David came up to play his game of "make-Morgan-shiver". From somewhere in me came the gumption to stand up to him, probably not so much courage as just being tired of being scared. I said: "You may whip me, but either do it right here and right now, or leave me alone." There was no chance in my mind or his who could whip whom; the guy was tough. In the presence of witnesses he walked away mumbling about how he couldn't fight at school and risk getting in trouble with the principal again. I didn't understand at the time the subtleties and paradoxes of the strength of weakness and the weakness of strength. All I knew was that an underweight 12-year-old, namely me, wasn't afraid anymore.
As we begin Holy Week with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and end the week with him being nailed on a cross by the Romans, our continuing problems with the identity of real life power are focused. Who really was powerful? The loving dreamer on the cross or the sword-swinging Romans with legions of soldiers to maintain order in Podunk provinces such as Judea?
This question of what truly is powerful is not a mere historical and academic inquiry. It is as real as you and me here today. You and I want to feel safe and secure. But there are so many things that make us feel weak and scared: the 12-year-old shivering because of the bully, the family on thin ice with money problems, the person feeling impotent in the face of a medical diagnosis, or all of us awake in the quietness of the night thinking about the unthinkable devastation of a nuclear blast. The question of where and what is the power that can make us safe or at least give us the strength to cope in unsafe predicaments is literally a life and death issue.
In Paul's letter to the church at Corinth, he described what real love is like and what real freedom is like. I have talked about them in two recent sermons. Today, we turn to his tackling of the matter of what constitutes real power for living and dying. His message for the Corinthians is also one for the Huntsvillians.
The Weakness of Power - Paul talks about the weakness of God's way really being stronger then what passes for power in this world. But before we go further we need to clarify what power boils down to in our world, or at least what we think. It cooks down to two things: the fist and the checkbook. In Jesus and Paul's day, it was the Romans who had the swords and the wealth to get what they wanted. It is hard to argue with the "I've-been-rich-and-I've-been-poor-and-rich-is-better" worldly wisdom. Or the idea that you work for peace in the world by being ready for war. How did Jesus riding into town on Palm Sunday or Paul writing to the Corinthians get the notion that kind of power could be challenged?
A couple of modern observations. The only wealthy family member I know of was a great uncle of mine who died about ten years ago. He was nice enough but for the most part was an edgy guy suspicious of any and everyone because he feared they were after his money. His wife, my great aunt-in-law, wore her massive diamond rings turned around on her fingers because she feared someone would take them if they saw them. They died fairly young. At present, some 80 or 90 of his and her nieces and nephews are still battling it out in the courts to see who can get some of the millions they did not live to spend.
Lack of money is no fun. But the abundance of it does not necessarily bring security and safety. After all, the more you have, the more you have to worry about losing it, someone taking it, or dying and leaving it. Rich may be better but it does not give you a bullet proof vest to protect you from worry or having to die.
Let's move from the weakness-power riddle of money to the enigma of what makes us safe from alleged enemies in the world. For twelve year olds, security may seem to be in fist power. For nations, it may seem to be in bomb power. Presently, there is a real debate in our country as to what makes us safe and secure in a world with countries that we do not trust and do not trust us. Whether you are on the side that says we need to increase our arsenal or the side that says the more we have the more dangerous life becomes, there seems to be at least one point of agreement. For all our massive spending and worrying about national defense, most of us feel less safe than we have for a generation. Like a bulging muscle bound weightlifter, we are almost paralyzed by our power. And so are the Russians, for that matter. The weakness of power boomerang hits one and all.
The Power of Weakness - With his talk about the 'weakness of God is stronger than men", Paul is getting at something of what might be called the power of weakness in life. Could it be that sometimes pain and weakness can do for us what our razzle-dazzle successes cannot?
If you were to watch a druggist do his work, you would see him use a mortar and pestle. A pestle is a hard little club instrument with which the druggist crushes and mixes medicines together in the mortar cup. The Spanish theologian and philosopher Miguel De Unamuno used the image of the mortar and pestle to talk about the power of weakness in life. He said: "Lovers never attain to a love of self-abandonment, of true fusion of soul and not merely of body, until the heavy pestle of sorrow has bruised their hearts and crushed them in the same mortar of suffering...if bodies are united in pleasure, souls are united by pain.'
Think about the people who really matter in your life. Think about the people who really keep you keeping on when you are not sure you can. If you are fortunate enough to have someone like that, then you know it is not the people who share a few laughs with you that really give you power to hang on. It is the people who stick with you and have weathered with you the storms that life in so many ways can dish out: problems, illnesses, setbacks, etc.
Money can impress me. Fists can scare me. But only a person who loves me and sticks with me when things are falling apart has the power to break my heart and turn me around.
The Power of the Crucified Christ - To the Hebrews who were looking for a sword-swinging messiah to give them power in a world that was humiliating them, a crucified Jesus was a scandal, an embarrassment to them. How could he be the messiah? To the Greeks, the intellectuals of the ancient world, wisdom, how to know what is what in life was sought for safety and security. To say a guy who got himself strung up had anything to say about what made sense of life and death was ludicrous, stupid. But Paul says, for those who have the eyes to see and the faith to respond: "Christ crucified is the power of God and the wisdom of God." How could this be?
First of all, the cross of Christ has the power to reveal life to us as it really is. There is crucifixion at the heart of life. Look at the face of someone who gets the medical bad news about themselves or someone they love...crucifixion. Look at the faces of persons who have been hurt or betrayed by someone they trusted...crucifixion. Fathom 12 million people killed in extermination camps...crucifixion. Imagine somewhere, sometime this very hour a child being abused... crucifixion.
In D. M. Thomas' novel The White Hotel, the main character Lisa dies from the bullets of Nazi machine guns at Babi Yar. Lisa is fiction. What happened at Babi Yar is fact. Babi Yar was a giant ravine-ditch in the Russian city of Kiev. There the occupying Nazis over a period of time lined up almost 250,000 Jews, naked, and shot them to death. Then they just covered them over in the ravine of Babi Yar. Thomas writes: "The soul of man is a far country which cannot be approached or explored. Most of the dead were poor and illiterate. But every single one of them had dreamed dreams, seen visions and had amazing experiences, even the babes in arms, (perhaps especially the babes in arms). Though most of them had never lived outside the...slum, their lives and histories were...rich and complex. If Sigmund Freud had been listening and taking notes from the time of Adam, he would still not fully have explored even a single group, even a single person.'
The crucified innocent on the cross has the power to reveal the crucifixion of all of the innocents and the not so innocents of this world. If you have not been cut yet by one of life's crucifixions, then you really don't know what life is about until you recognize that most have and sooner or later you will. The cross has the power to reveal life as it is. And there is no way to know the joy of life's best until we recognize the pain of its pits.
Second, the best of all of the cross's power is that it reveals God with us in life not only at its best but at its worst. Sure, we like winners. We like to be winners. It is kind of fun to imagine Jesus leading the parade into Jerusalem on that first Palm Sunday. After all, all of us love a parade. But we will never make contact with Jesus, if we ever make contact with him at all, at the parade. The contact point is the hurting Jesus on the cross. The crossroads of the cross is the intersection where humans and God meet, if ever they meet. Because if God does not know me in my pain, he does not know me.
I get impressed when I consider the complexity of the universe, I get a few goosebumps when I look at a sunset and feel God's presence. But God only shakes me and changes me when I face the crucified Jesus on the cross and experience God somehow, someway with him there and me there. The power of the crucified Christ is that I find myself at one with God, atonement, at-one-ment, even at life's worst. And remember, it is only the ones who are with us at our moments of greatest hurt who have the power to change us, give us a reason to live, and a hope with which to face death.
More than once, I have heard someone in the throes of a personal problem, loss of a loved one, or illness say: "No one can help me. No one knows how I feel.” The power of Jesus is that you can't say to him, the betrayed one, the spit on one, the young dying one, the pain racked one, "You don't know how I feel." Because he did and does.
Christians find power in the cross. It has the power to show us life as it is for all its beauty, still crucifying! It also shows us the God who is with us to keep us keeping on even at the most painful times. It also shows us the way to give and receive power and strength with each other. Hearts are broken and lives are changed only when we have the guts to attend one another's crucifixions. Unless we have struggled with Christ on the cross, then the resurrection will never make any sense. But you'll have to be here on Easter for that part of the story. Amen.
Pastoral Prayer
God, each of us in our own way is in some sort of power predicament. Pressed from every side by people, the clock, and obligations, some of us need to be here to sit still, re-group, and let our minds, spirits, and muscles be refreshed.
God, here are still others whose days and nights have not too much but too little going on. Power is needed here, also. Power to go on, to reach out.
God, you have given us powers galore. With the power of our voices we can speak words that can build people up or tear them down. With our arm power we can knock blocks off or hug. The power of our money can buy super stylish stuff and it can buy a better life for some of your children who need a chance. The power of our minds, which in some partial way are in your image, can make our earth one great green garden of food or make it into a giant planetary cemetery.
Oh, God, without the guidance of your way and love, our power is a horror. So, we come with our power which is powerless without you. We come with our weaknesses which becomes strength through you. For power to live and power to die, we come to you, God. In Jesus name we come to you. Amen.